Chinese scammers found a way to fool Paypal Users

[FrankJG]

I found this in the hardway. 

Chinese scammers have found a way to use Paypal to rob users. This is how they do it.

They open a ecommerce site in a free service called ECWID. This site will use Paypal in their stores. Then they sell in that site a lot of very expensive products at a very low price, examples:

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Then they open a new Facebook business account which give you $10 to promote your business. Then they start promoting these deals, saying that they are based in New York and they have run into some issues with their Stock and they need to sell their merchandise. Usually they have another account that post in that same post at Facebook comments saying that this is for real and that he bought an item from the promoted store and they go it. 

So, because the price is always around $100 you decide to take the risk and buy the product paying using paypal thinking that you are protected. After a while you see that nothing is shipped, you start sending emails that are not responded, at one point you send an email to the email that received your payment in paypal saying that you will open a dispute because the item is not shipped. Right there the status in the site changes from Processing to Shipped without a Tracking number. Of course you will ask about it and they either do not respond or give you a bunch of excuses the idea is to waste your time and get you out of the 30 days period to open the dispute. If you open a dispute you will of course mention that you have not received the item and that you never received a tracking number and here is where things get interesting. They ship you a little $1 dollar item to obtain in this way a tracking number to give Paypal. Paypal sees the tracking number which is valid and closes the case. 

Here is an article describing the service that this Chinese scammers use to send you those cheap items and a picture that I took of the one sent to me. <removed>

https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2019/10/25/americans-are-still-receiving-unordered-packages...

To ship the article they use a chinese company <removed> LIMITED with offices in Chino, California. 

Here is an email sent to the scammer where I point that there is not any tracking number

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Paypal has removed a way to appeal cases and this is one of the reasons why I have decided to come public denouncing this case. 

[FrankJG]

One more key point, the physical address of the warehouse in New York does not exist.

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Few extra things that I have done:

I have opened investigations in various pages:

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[richardc293]

Yes I found this out and as a local Neighbourhood watch coordinator in my Community, I now have seen that well over 150,000 cases have been recorde in the UK. So why are Ebay and PayPal refusing to stop this.  They must have made millions out of it.  All I ask for is me money returned but PayPal just switch off.  I now see that their Chinese Address in Shenzhen has been replaced with a Scandinavian address but there are still dozens of scam companies in Shenzhen  - Guangzhou Province.  Be careful

[Daysrose]

I wish I saw this last month got me for $89 sent a key chain ugh... I will not use PayPal anymore I'm done with losing my money.

[Aacostumer]

Report it to the FTC and make sure you tell them PayPal is doing nothing to solve the problem and stop the fraud, they should be able to protect us users and they choose NOT to, this is serious these companies are taking advantage of consumers and someone needs to stop them 😤

[FrankJG]

I may be forced to do that! Complain about PayPal lack of deposit investigation. Good idea.

[FrankJG]

Today I received the following email from Ecwid: 

Hello,
This is Xena, Ecwid Customer Care team. Thanks for reaching us out!

First of all, thank you for giving us the details about this situation, and I'm really sorry you faced this.

Ecwid is an e-commerce platform that is available to everyone who wants to open a store and start selling online. Ecwid itself neither sells anything nor processes any payments. We cannot control all our users, but we are certainly aimed at preventing fraudulent activity.

As I see from our database, you placed an order (#313) in the Electronic mall store located here https://guessbill.com/

I'm writing to inform you that we blocked the store so that no further orders come in. Looks like none of the orders on that website have been shipped because the owner of the store never fulfilled them. This is a violation of our Terms of Service.

Please note Ecwid doesn't process any kind of orders (neither ships nor fulfils them) as well as we are not involved in any kind of payments, all the payments go through payment companies like Square Payments or PayPal. I see your order was paid via PayPal payment company. To get a refund, please, contact your bank and dispute the transaction.

Alternatively, you can contact PayPal (who processed the money for the order) and claim your money back as they offer the buyers protection within 180 days. Check this link https://www.paypal.com/sg/webapps/mpp/paypal-buyer-protection

We appreciate your awareness. Again, I'm really sorry about such an outcome. This is disappointing and inappropriate. And I am sorry that it happened with the merchant who runs a store on our platform.

Hope this helps.
Warmly,
Xena

Ecwid Customer Care team

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[FrankJG]

Is PayPal checking this forum?

[joeheimer]

I ordered two Ebikes.  I received two rubber band hair ties.  Filed a dispute with PAYPAL.  i was denied on grounds that I received items. I cant appeal dispute. I cant talk with anyone in person. When I call I am told my account wont let let me? Im out 260 dollars.  So much for PAYPAL guaranteeing my purchases. 

[FrankJG]

I got them on the phone and asked for an appeal. They had to switch from item no received to wrong item received. They will ask to file complains with an anti piracy site and you need pictures of the envelop where they sent you whatever they sent you and what they sent you. Good luck. They don’t check this forum btw.